By the end of the 18th century, the practice had been banned in territories held by some European powers. The Portuguese banned the practice in Goa by about 1515, though it is not believed to have been especially prevalent there.[21][22] The Dutch and the French also banned it in Chinsurah and Pondicherry. The British who by then ruled much of the subcontinent, and the Danes, who held the small territories of Tranquebar and Serampore, permitted it until the 19th century. Attempts to limit or ban the practice had been made by individual British officers in the 18th century, but without the backing of the British East India Company. The first formal British ban was imposed in 1798, in the city of Calcutta only. The practice continued in surrounding regions. Toward the end of the 18th century, the evangelical church in Britain, and its members in India, started campaigns against sati. Leaders of these campaigns included William Carey and William Wilberforce, and both appeared to be motivated by their love for the Indian people and their desire to introduce Indians to Christianity. These movements put pressure on the company to ban the act, and the Bengal Presidency started collecting figures on the practice in 1813. The leader of the burgeoning Swaminarayan sect, Sahajanand Swami, was influential in the eventual eradication of sati. He argued that the practice had no Vedic standing and only God could take a life he had given. He also argued that widows could lead a life that would eventually lead to salvation. Governor Malcolm supported Sahajanand in this endeavor, whose domino effect led to other social reforms.[23] From about 1812, the Bengali reformer Raja Rammohan Roy started his own campaign against the practice. He was motivated by the experience of seeing his own sister-in-law being forced to commit sati. Among his actions, he visited Calcutta cremation grounds to persuade widows not to so die, formed watch groups to do the same, and wrote and disseminated articles to show that it was not required by scripture. On 4 December 1829, the practice was formally banned in the Bengal Presidency lands, by the then governor, Lord William Bentinck. The ban was challenged in the courts, and the matter went to the Privy Council in London, but was upheld in 1832. Other company territories also banned it shortly after. Although the original ban in Bengal was fairly uncompromising, later in the century British laws include provisions that provided mitigation for murder when "the person whose death is caused, being above the age of 18 years, suffers death or takes the risk of death with his own consent".[19] Sati remained legal in some princely states for a time after it had been abolished in lands under British control. Jaipur, banned the practice in 1846.[24] Nepal continued to practice Sati well into the 20th century. On the Indonesian island of Bali, sati (known as masatya) was practised by the aristocracy as late as 1905, until Dutch colonial rule pushed for its termination. - Wiki

ah, some religion had/has some practices...good to read at least Dutch colonial rule did some good....(by pushing for termination of this practice!)

...As the Wikipedia entry ( above ) makes clear, it was during the time of Governor-General Wellesley (1798-1805) that the British had at first contemplated imposing an absolute ban on sati/ suttee.... At that time the matter was referred to the Calcutta Supreme Court for a decision , but there it was concluded that the issue was a question of morality rather than of law, and so no definitive ruling was made. In 1813, after consulting various leading Hindu priests and pundits, the government made some effort to try and ' regulate' the practise of sati i.e. ~ it was only permitted to take place with prior warning, in the presence of a policeman, whose duty it was to clarify whether the woman in question had agreed to participate of her own free-will, and that she had not been drugged and was not pregnant. One is, of course, immediately moved to ask why the British authroities were so hesitant in out-lawing sati ? Why did they dither and delay over making a decision when so many of their number were absolutely horrified by it ? The answer, as with so many questions in life, was entirely political. The EIC was very reluctant to interfere with indigenous Indian religious or cultural traditions for fear of provoking any sort of backlash that might lead to civic disorder or unrest. It took the direct intervention of one or two bolder individuals amongst their number to move the debate along~ viz : "I am decidedly of the opinion that the abolition of [ sati ] would not be attended by any drastic consequences; on the contrary, I think that the enactment of such a law is dictated by every principle of humanity..." ~ Edmund Moloney, Magistrate, Burdwan (c. 1820) or : " I look upon this inhuman practise as one tolerated to the disgrace of the British government; it is even abominated by the Indians themselves and nowhere is it enjoined by Hindu law..." ~ C.M. Lushington ( c.1820) (see ' The Founders' by Philip Woodruff, 1953, p.253-9) Lord William Bentinck, something of a liberal by the standards of his own times, was the first Governor-General prepared to place his own outraged sensibilities above and beyond any of the political considerations ~ and it was he who announced the total ban upon the practise of suti in 1829. Here is a link to a PDF document that contains of the full text of Bentinck's minute ' On the Suppression of Sati ', which makes for interesting reading ~ it is, however, quite lengthy and one must make allowances for the colonial-era phraseology: http://sdstate.edu/projectsouthasia/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=861388

Sati had also been banned during the time of Emperor Aurangzeb on an initiative taken by two European adventurers (including Niccolo Manucci). We should be grateful to the British for outlawing this ancient practise for good. However, there still are sporadic cases of sati being performed in rural areas as reports appear in newspapers occasionally. It must have been a horrific sight. I wonder how the poor woman felt when she was pushed into the funeral pyre....

Asad Ahmed ji in context of India sati wasn't an ancient tradition. It originated from incidents in medieval times. The original immolation of Sati never became a tradition. Sporadic incidents of wives willing to die with husbands out of extreme love may have happened. Our priests have always been quick to make such austerities into traditions. This and many more of medieval customs are an aberration of the original Vedic culture. Vedas don't even attest caste system. Even Manu smriti was doctored by priests at some point to secure their position permanently. So were many other ancient scriptures. Thank god original versions exist as left behind by sages. No wonder Indian culture and religion is face serious challenges to its survival today.

ghastly practice. definitely one of the social evils that india should be happy to be rid of, and ashamed of ever having precipitated as a social phenomenon, in its history - no matter under what justification. sati is probably the height of a patriarchal culture. other lesser (though as condemnable) instances of patriarchy include considering the woman as a property of the man - first the father, and then the husband. even the mahabharata records the instance of the poor madhavi, born a princess, given away in alms by the king yayati to galav, who is rented out to 3 kings by galav, so that he could collect the resources necessary to pay his gurudakshina. wife selling, though, is not an exclusive phenomenon of indian patriarchy, of course. even in europe, notably in england, wife-selling was very formally practiced right till the beginning of the 20th century, where husbands would sell their wives by public auction. i guess, these are horrible vestiges of a global patriarchal culture, and the world is a much better place to be rid of such practices - which can only be called unconditionally evil for the lack of a better word.

@Julian Craig I have seen a documentary on BBC of all the places which claimed that Jesus came to India (Kashmir) after crucifixion. There are some other people who have views that Jesus survived. Not only that, Jesus's un documented early years between being born and re-appearing as a youth, he is believed to have studied philosophy in India most likely at ancient Nalanda university (medieval in Indian historical context). This again was covered by BBC and National Geographic. This by no means takes away divinity from Jesus. Its just search of truth about an enigma. About wife selling, well I have read it first on this forum only. It is absurd indeed but any reason why wife selling in Europe in absurd and the story from India is not! I find both equally absurd and equally acceptable.

Mr Kulshreshtha ~ I am quite certain that even the BBC draw the line at " wife-selling by public auction " ~ although one can never be sure ! Regards etc.

possibly but I have come to accept after reading lot of history that weird aberrations do take place in lives of civilizations. Although it is absurd but I won't be too surprised if it proven to be true both in India as well as in Europe's cases.

... Re: " weird [ historical ] aberrations " I suppose that nothing can be considered stranger than a relative handful of Englishmen controlling and shaping the political destiny of hundreds of millions of Indians, for a period of more than two hundred years, and still detecting a certain admiration for one another's culture, and each other's traditional institutions (such as the BBC ~ which isn't what it used to be !) ~ but, there we are...

yes indeed. India fell to its own vices more than anything else. It had fallen in 1000AD itself when muslim invaders took its frontier states of Afghanistan (Up-gan-sthaan original sanskrit) It fell to its vices right till Nadir Shah of Iran and Ahmad Shah Abdali in 18th century. English who had bagged few trade treaties had a sitting duck here. It was for anyone's to be taken with little enterprise. But I must give it to British where they deserve. Knowingly or unknowingly they stopped the series of Islamic invasions on India. They united us once again after a thousand years literally and this time around we were democratic. So, nothing wrong in British doing what they did. You have power you rule. They took a lot that was dear and they left a lot that is good, which are strong institutions.

Mr Kulshreshtha ~ Insomnia has struck (it is 4 a.m. in London) and my mind wanders to the RBSI as a source of distraction and which is, afterall, open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week ! I extend to you some credit for your comment immediately above ~ for I know that it is a far from popular point of view amongst your fellow countryman, very few of whom seem able or prepared, sadly, to look beyond the simplistic 'oppressive,immoral,malevolent British Empire' formula that has been taught for so many years within Indian schools, and has been peddled for so many years by the Indian media ( much of which is breath-taking in its bias and inaccuracy)... for those of us who live outside of India but take an educated interest in its history (which if we happen to be British is, in some respects at least, also part of our own history) , we have had learn to take such post-colonial, Marxian, 'revisionist' clap-trap squarely on the chin and with a very large pinch of salt ! Of course it goes without saying, that if an Englishman should ever dare to suggest that his country has played a part in the defining the contours of the modern world in which we all live and that British Imperialism, for all of its numerous faults, did leave in its wake, many positive virtues, he or she is instantly attacked for attempting to ' defend the indefensible' ... you can imagine the sort of frustration that this induces over a period of time ! India and Britain still have a mutual bond and in fact it is only whenever the continuing need for this bond is questioned, that the relationship becomes problematic... India is, of course, sailing rapidly upon a course towards a more prosperous future, but still is for now, very-much a developing nation ~ It seems that the Indian political class /intelligentsia does not like to admit this to itself very often ~ they are a patriotic lot, for which they cannot be faulted, but they cannot escape from the irony, that must be a very inconvenient truth for them, that it was the British (and before them the Moghuls and so on and so on) who helped to give shape and substance to the India of today~ the few amongst their number who acknowledge this simple historical fact are, to my mind, the most rational of Indian thinkers... It is entirely understandable why India's focus, post-1947, has remained inward looking and has given short shrift to the views of former ' occupiers/ conquerers/ despots' [ delete as appropriate] ~ but it's quite astonishing how entrenched this rather warped world -view has been allowed to become in India...I cannot for the life of me imagine how one could ever hope to understand the forces that drove colonialism without attempting to understand the European societies (from the political, economic & philosophical perspective) from which it emerged and only attempt to understand the long story of the sub-continent through a very narrow prism of dated nationalist dogma... but that, it often appears, is what Indian historians are determined to try and do ! Nor can I fully fathom how or why why the members of an older Indian generation, who really should know better, put up with the calculated indocrination of their youth ~ but there must be reasons why they do, it's all to do with concepts of identity and nation-building and what-not. Of course, it is easy for we Europeans to sit in judgement from afar and I must admit that I occasionaly feel a twinge of angst at certain values I hold that many (certianly in India) might consider to be patronising... but such thoughts soon vanish ~ without wishing to sound pompous or melodramtic, it is one of our Great British virtues, this sort of introspective thought.... much of our own heritage and traditon, which is quite as old as anything you might find in India, has now been lost and that is a cause of much sadness and regret .... the world is a changed place but Britain still plays it's role.... perhaps much of our own national story is mythology ~ and perhaps no one is quite so good at believing in the inherent decency of the British than the British themselves ~ but ~ we have certainly made a generous contribution to global development... and it should not be readily forgotten.... .

Well put. This was one of your most lucid comments Julian Craig. If one can write so cogently at 4 am, I can only wonder how much better it would be at 4 pm ?...

... ha ~ ha ... I tend to run out of steam by mid-afternoon, RBSI ...

Julian: Very well written, straight from the heart. At least I never had any doubts about the importance of British contributions to India. It is sad that they are often overlooked or underestimated by my countrymen.

I cannot but observe that the practice of Suttee was not far too dissimilar to the burning of witches of the inquisition period. I suppose, male domination and inhuman treatment of the members of weaker class or sex was part of culture in different parts of the world including Europe. And each society has thrown up voices of sanity and reform every time. It becomes painful when such voices fall silent.

In all fairness, men should also have been thrown into the pyre if the wife died first.

... Your observation is certainly true, Shekhar... It should be recalled that criminals were hung or beheaded in English town squares, in front of baying crowds, well into the 18th century ~ but I think that sati was a rather different phenomena in many respects ~ the women involved were obliged to forfeit their lives simply on the basis that their husband had lost his.... I think that is why so many foreign observors, Moghul and British alike, found its practise so morally reprehensible ~ their seemed to be no rationale or justice behind it ...

Julian Craig You are right Juian about the abominable nature of the practice of Suttee. But we must also remember that not all women were forced into immolation. That happened mostly in cases where property rights were in question and the prctice I expect was restricted to a certain social class. Witch hunts were not the same as open hanging of criminals in public squares. Was it?

It seems that the whole idea was that a woman belonged to a man forever. Thus, if he is gone, she too has to accompany him into the unknown.

@Asad... you will go down in history for that comment... Bravo...

Asad Ahmed It is ironical that the same society revered women as goddesses. Chivalry or "Streedakshinya" are products of the same society. So the idea you suggest was not universal but existed in contexts.

Whatever may have been the earlier reasons for its existence... there is a clear possiblity that Sati was perpetuated by the relatives in order to usurp the property of the dead man... by eliminating the one obvious obstruction...which happened to be the poor widow !

On the whole, our male-dominated society has failed to appreciate the sacrifices made by women in everyday life - often in quiet solitude. Picasso once classified women as "either goddesses or doormats". I think all women qualify as goddesses in one way or the other.

Shekhar ~ I think that I am fairly correct in saying that the practise of ' Witch-craft' ( ie. Pagan worship ) was punishable by death in Britain until the 1700s (but I would have to check)... Of course, countless thousands of clerics and men and women of the Catholic faith had been put to death in England during the 16th century at the time of the Reformation ( often in very brutal fashion) ~ and capital punishment for convicted criminals continued until the 1960s (some suggest that it should be reinstated) ~ that all nations and all cultures, throughout history, have the spilling of much blood upon their hands is not in question... and that all nations and all cultures, in the past, indulged in practises that to our eyes, and the eyes of our recent ancestors seemed exceptionally barbaric is also not in question... but , as I said previously, to many foreign observors, sati seemed to be a particularly dreadful, cruel and essentially pointless, custom. ... Here is an astonishing extract from ' British India' by Michael Edwardes ( a very even-tempered and balanced historian, incidently), 1967, p.99 : ..." The practise of sati was of long standing in India, but in general, the rite was confined to high-caste Hindus [ but not, it seems, exclusively] ... In 1780, the Raja of Marwar was joined in death by his sixty-four wives. A Sikh prince of the Punjab took with him ten wives and no less than three hundred concubines."

i think it is fairly clear that every culture has precipitated various kinds of evils - especially centered around patriarchy. some of them are very visible and some of them are hidden away or highlighted in the history written by victors. if we dig far enough, we might be be fully repulsed by the entire human race in the atrocities we have heaped upon each other - regardless of what culture we belong to. i think it is no surprise to anyone that the human attitude of covering up one's own flaws (and highlighting those of others) is common to every single culture. this human tendency is one of the things that we observe from history and such discussions, isnt it? as JC has previously said on this forum (with respect the the british empire), that one should judge the culture based on their positive contributions, and not by their flaws. bottom line - every culture is the same across the world and its only a matter of what particular heinous form was taken by their negative tendencies, based on their socio-religious circumstances and inclinations. let us simply be glad that such social evils are out today and never ever justify them away.

Well said Pankaj Sapkal...and excellent summation for this discussion !

"The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history - its mass appeal." ~ José Ortega y Gasset, Historical Reason

Julian I would only say that it is difficult for you if not impossible for you to understand the mental state or states of a country which existed proudly for thousands of years united and divided at different periods but always with a strong sense of nationalism from Hindu Kush to Bay of Bengal and from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and then it endured a thousand years of foreign rule only to get its sense of identity back just six decades ego. Britain did what it thought it needed to do. The better team won. Good thing is it changed things in India for better politically. Those of my countrymen who think we would have been better off without you are sadly mistaken. If only they could read the events jsut before Britain's entry into the scene. I don't agree with your view on Indian historians. Most of us read history texts books in India written by Romilla Thapar, a British educated historian. The other authority is Archaeological survey of India, again set up by British and still has a bias. So we really don't have an institutionalized anti-British approach. There is far more of our own legacy to follow too. We did exist before Britain happened to us; in fact we bloomed and declined as a civilization when much of Europe's known civilizations were not even born!! So we are busy catch up with ourselves while we do acknowledge Britain's immense effect on the present world. The fact that I am writing all this in English and not Hindi says it all.

Excellent assessment ! "...So we are busy catching up with ourselves"... Thats so well said...Mayank Kulshreshtha.

Mr Kulshreshtha ~ While it is certainly true to say that it is difficult for an Englishman to " understand the mental state " or inner nature of Indian national identity, it is not impossible (and vice versa). It is dialouge, between one " mental state" and the other, that is of the most importance in establishing such an understanding. ... the ancient roots of Indian society were a source of enduring fascination for the British from the time of William Jones, et al, onwards... this was true even amongst the most staunchly imperialistic of their number, those who believed that British rule in India was a 'necessity' rather than a matter of expediency ~ viz : "Powerful Empires existed and flourished here [in India] while Englishmen were still wandering painted in the woods, and while the British Colonies were a wilderness and a jungle. India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy and the religion of mankind than any other terrestial unit in the universe." ~ Lord Curzon ( 1901 )